{"id":938,"date":"2013-01-04T22:25:40","date_gmt":"2013-01-05T03:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/?p=938"},"modified":"2013-01-04T22:25:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-05T03:25:40","slug":"classic-wins-encourage-mhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/archives\/938\/","title":{"rendered":"Classic wins encourage MHS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.centraljersey.com\/articles\/2013\/01\/04\/the_princeton_packet\/sports\/doc50e5e339e6d3c236376949.txt\" target=\"_blank\">Princeton Packet<\/a><\/p>\n<table style=\"width: 100%;\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"left\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<table style=\"width: 100%;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"left\" valign=\"top\">\n<div id=\"StoryPageSubHead\">Boys basketball knocks off pair of top opponents in tourney<\/div>\n<div id=\"StoryTimestamp\">DATE POSTED: Friday, January 4, 2013 2:05 AM EST<\/div>\n<div id=\"StoryPageByline\">By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor<\/div>\n<div id=\"fb-root\">\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<td width=\"50\" valign=\"top\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<td align=\"right\" valign=\"top\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<div>\n<table style=\"width: 330px;\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"10\" align=\"left\" bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"center\" valign=\"top\">\n<table style=\"width: 310px; height: 300px;\" border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"5\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"center\" bordercolor=\"#eeeeee\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td id=\"TopPhoto\" align=\"center\" valign=\"top\">\n<div id=\"NewSysJSSlideShowMainContainer\">\n<div id=\"NewSysJSSlideShowPhotoBoxWrapper\">\n<div id=\"NewSysJSSlideShowPhotoBox\"><a id=\"SlideShowPhotoLinkUrl\" href=\"http:\/\/www.centraljersey.com\/content\/articles\/2013\/01\/04\/the_princeton_packet\/sports\/doc50e5e339e6d3c236376949.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"NewSysJSSlideShowMainPhoto\" src=\"http:\/\/www.centraljersey.com\/content\/articles\/2013\/01\/04\/the_princeton_packet\/sports\/doc50e5e339e6d3c236376949.jpg\" alt=\"Justin Kovacevich scored 18 points to help the Montgomery High boys basketball team to a 59-56 win over Medford Tech at the Vaughn Stapleton Classic last week.Photo by Robert Gleason\u009d\u009d\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div id=\"NewSysJSSlideShowCutlineBox\">\n<div id=\"NewSysJSSlideShowCutline\">Justin Kovacevich scored 18 points to help the Montgomery High boys basketball team to a 59-56 win over Medford Tech at the Vaughn Stapleton Classic last week.Photo by Robert Gleason\u009d\u009d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><\/div>\n<div>The Montgomery High boys basketball team didn\u2019t claim a tournament championship with their two wins in the Vaughn Stapleton Classic at Bridgewater-Raritan High.<\/p>\n<p> Well, not officially.<\/p>\n<p> The Cougars were the only team in the four-team event to go 2-0, giving them a pseudo championship in the event that featured pre-determined matchups. The Cougars opened the two games with a 48-40 win over Bridgewater, before coming back to defeat Medford Tech, 59-56, in their second game of the tournament.<\/p>\n<p> Brandon Solomon scored 14 points and Justin Kovacevich added 13 for the Cougars in the opening win over the Panthers. Against Medford Tech, Michael Rubayo led the way with a 24-point, 17-rebound effort. Kovacevich added 18 points in the win.<\/p>\n<div>\u201dPeople want to talk about the Bridgewater game and it was a great win for us,\u201d said Montgomery coach Kris Grundy, whose team is 4-2. \u201cBridgewater was coming off a win over Gill-St. Bernards and they were ranked 18th in the state. We were down two at the half came out in the third quarter we came out and played well and pushed the lead to 11. But they battled back to cut it to two. Zach DeVincenzo hit a clutch three and Brandon had some clutch free throws. Defensively we held them to 40 and they had just put a 70-spot on Gill two nights prior.\u201d<\/div>\n<div>In the Cougars\u2019 second game in the tournament, which was played at Bridgewater, they faced a very talented Medford Tech team and pulled out a second impressive win.<\/p>\n<p> \u201dMedford Tech isn\u2019t as well known being from South Jersey, but they went to South Jersey Group II final last year and had everybody back. They were 4-1 and crushing teams. Their only loss was to Atlantic City, which won Group IV last year. They beat Piscataway and Bordentown both by 30-plus. So it was a real nice win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> Grundy came into the season knowing he had a talented team and he wanted to make sure the Cougars would be tested during the season. They have already taken on several good teams and have an impressive start under their belts.<\/p>\n<p> \u201dWe have a lot of guys back and I wanted to see how good we are and want us to be battle tested by the time the tournaments come around,\u201d Grundy said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019ve played Elizabeth. We have Lenape on Saturday which is a team ranked in the state. By the time the season is over we\u2019ll have played eight or nine teams in the top 20 in the state.<\/p>\n<p> \u201dWe\u2019re the typical Montgomery team that plays very solid and aggressive defense. That is our hallmark, that we\u2019ll defend every night. Offensively we have a nice motion offense. We won\u2019t have a kid score 40, but it will come from different players.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> That was the case in the two games in Bridgewater, where the Cougars spread around the scoring.<\/p>\n<p> \u201dWe know what we\u2019ll get from Rubayo and Kovacevich,\u201d Grundy said. \u201c(Zaryab) Ayub had a big second half against Medford Tech where he took a charge and played unbelievable defense against their best kid. It can be anybody on any give night.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> Next on the agenda for the Cougars is battling for a fourth straight conference championship, which became a bit tougher this year with the addition of Ridge and North Hunterdon to the Skyland Conference Raritan Division.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Princeton Packet Boys basketball knocks off pair of top opponents in tourney DATE POSTED: Friday, January 4, 2013 2:05 AM EST By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor Justin Kovacevich scored 18 points to help the Montgomery High boys basketball team to a 59-56 win over Medford Tech at the Vaughn Stapleton Classic last week.Photo by Robert [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":939,"href":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions\/939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mhsbasketball.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}